“When I saw the rockets being fired at Mario’s house, I swore to myself that the Americans would pay dearly for what they are doing. When this war is over a much wider and bigger war will begin for me: The war that I am going to wage against them. I know that this is my real destiny.” Fidel Castro wrote these words in 1958, the decisive year of his guerrilla war against Dictator Fulgencio Batista.
According to the myth of “homeland security,” no matter how much military strength we have or control we exert, there is always “a rising tide of tumult” somewhere that threatens our national security. At every moment, somewhere in the world, we have something crucial to lose. The name of the threat can change with surprising ease. But the peril must always be there. It’s essential to the story. And that story, in turn, is now essential to every presidential contest.
The ease with which we’ve accepted drone attacks bodes ill for the future.
Security knows security when it sees it.
While the proponents of the U.S. pivot to Asia argue that it enhances regional security, it is in reality precipitating a much more explicit Sino-American rivalry, thus undermining the prospects of an amicable and pluralistic regional order. Ultimately, America’s growing military presence in the region could backfire, giving birth to what it dearly seeks to prevent.
Meanwhile, “Yugonostalgia” has been all the rage among a certain class of cognoscenti over the last few years.
It’s sometimes lost on the arms control community that halting the spread of nuclear weapons begins at home.
As he did in the first two debates, GOP candidate Mitt Romney reversed himself on a number of extreme right-wing positions he had taken earlier in a desperate effort to depict himself as a moderate. At the same time, Obama’s hawkish stances served as yet another reminder of just how far to the right Obama has evolved since running as an anti-war candidate just four years ago.
As chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals Carla Del Ponte found herself struggling uphill against institutional indifference and opposition.
The response of Libya to the Benghazi attacks provide hope that it may be capable of controlling the militias in the end.